The New Crisis

Articles from Vol. 109, No. 5, September/October

Politics Hispanic Leaders Grade Congress Latino advocacy groups released a report card grading lawmakers on votes taken in the House and Senate which affect the social, economic and political advancement and quality of life of Hispanics in this country....

UpFront BLACK FARMERS SPEAK OUT NEW YORK FIREFIGHTERS FALL ELECTIONS YOUTH WORLDWIDE FIGHT AIDS As far back as the 1960s, Detroit activist Ray Jenkins has been calling for reparations from the U.S. government to compensate African Americans for centuries...

June Jordan (1936-2002) was the most amazing teacher. Ever. Period. Despite being one of the many fortunate students she transformed into a poet, I can't seem to conjure up a metaphor to truly capture her. No twister or tsunami could match the force...

On the blank side of a July 1960 calendar page, Arna Bontemps wrote a message to himself for an autobiography he never finished. Its planned title was A Man's Name. The note read: "I speak for the tormented souls who are doomed to struggle through life...

Backstory We were in Italy when I first met Gen. Benjamin O. Davis Jr. It was 1944, and I had just reported to the 332nd Fighter Group as a replacement pilot. During a briefing for my first combat mission, Davis, the first Black general in the Air Force,...

Editor's Note This election season there were a number of heated contests in which Black incumbents faced Black challengers. In these races pitting Democrats against one another, most of the focus has been on the fact that the incumbents have been political...

Before hijackers commandeered jumbo jets and crashed them into the World Trade Center in New York City last year, fire department Capt. Paul Washington felt the issues he had been fighting for, particularly Black recruitment, were, as far as the city...

music On a spring day in 1841, Solomon Northrup set out from his Saratoga Springs, N.Y.. home, his beloved violin in tow, to provide musical entertainment at a carnival in Washington, D.C. For the educated free Black farmer and musical virtuoso, slavery...

Some of Us Did Not Die: New and Selected Essays of June Jordan, (Basic/Civitas Books, $26). Poet June Jordan passed away on June 14 (see page 13), but her voice and spirit "did not die." The UC Berkeley African American Studies professor completed this...

The Feud Continues This is in response to Betsy Peoples' piece "Jefferson Family Feud" in the July/August 2002 issue. As a Hemmings descendant [although history books use one "m," family members contend Hemmings is spelled with two] and a fellow participant...

CrisisForum White Boy: A Memoir By Mark D. Naison (Temple University Press, $69.50/$19.95 paper) When Mark D Naison began to write his master's thesis at Columbia University in 1966, he had a meeting with his master's supervisor William Leuchtenberg....

Joe Black, 78, the Brooklyn Dodger who in 1952 became the first Black pitcher to win a World Series game, died May 17 at the Life Care Center in Scottsdale, Ariz. He had prostate cancer. George Cooper, 85, one of the first Black men to become an officer...

Women in Journalism Stamps to be Issued In September, the U.S. Postal Service will issue commemorative stamps honoring women in journalism. Nellie Bly, Ida M. Tarbell, Marguerite Higgins and Ethel L. Payne were trailblazers in war correspondence, investigative...

A pioneering feminist and Pan-African freedom fighter The life and times of Amy Jacques Garvey challenge our understanding of Marcus Garvey and Garveyism and unveil the complicated reality of black radical. Although Jacques Garvey was bornin Jamaica...

The Supreme Court's ruling on tuition vouchers is a boost for the school choice movement. But the opposition insists that putting public school students in private school classrooms won't fly. Just days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Cleveland's...

In August members of the National Black Farmers Association (NBFA) parked a tractor in front of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) building and, with a mule in tow, demonstrated along the sidewalk. More than three years ago, the farmers consolidated...

CrisisForum scanning on Race: Racial Politics in Presidential Campaigns, 1960-2000 By Jeremy Mayer (Random House 24.95) Jeremy Mayer leads readers out on minefield that is the road to the White House with this tantlaizing observation: Let's set aside...

Issues &amp; Views The morning of Sept. 11, I was sitting at my desk hastily putting the finishing touches on the manuscript for a book called Freedom Dreams. A few minutes before 9 a.m., I heard the first explosion, immediately followed by what sounded...

Issues &amp; Views Earlier this year, when Butterfields auction bouse in California announced the pending sale of a cache of invaluable items that belonged to Malcolm X, there was a firestorm of criticism in the domestic and international media, academia...

CrisisForum television Mention civil rights, and several names immediately come to mind: Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Rosa Parks and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. But before Martin and Malcolm and Rosa, there was Booker T. Washington,...

LEGISLATIVE REPORT CARD Keeping an eye on key civil rights votes on Capitol Hill NAACP members at the 93rd national convention in Houston may have been 2,000 miles away from Washington, but they still kept tabs on the progress of NAACP-supported legislation...

NAACP Convention Galvanizes Delegates for Action Approximately 20,000 people went to Houston July 6-11 to attend the NAACP's 93rd Annual Convention. The convention, themed "Freedom Under Fire," kicked off with a health "jazzercise" and the opening of...

Charging that the White House has "locked out" the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), the NAACP and other civil rights groups, Rev. Jesse L. Jackson is planning a prayer vigil outside the U.S. Justice Department to "ask God to open closed doors." "This...

Natasha Phiri, a fresh-faced 19year-old from Zambia, attended the 14th International AIDS Conference in Barcelona in July. It was her first time at the biennial gathering, and Phiri was left wide-eyed by the more than 10,000 people from across the globe...